The point of Early Childhood study

The best predictor of a good ending is a good beginning. The old adage is a true today as when it was first uttered so long ago that no one can clearly say who first spoke those words. When it comes to the instruction of young children this proverb has such expansive relevance that it is hard to overstate its importance. All studying and life caress is moulded by what happens to the child in the early years of his or her life. The sway of the family is of major importance but the sway of the educational opportunities offered to young children is just as marvelous and, in some ways, more powerful. For it is the impact of early childhood instruction that determines the attitude a child will take to formal instruction at original or secondary level.

The world today is a troubled place. We seem to be getting good at hating one another. We seem less and less able to accept people who are different from us. In a world riddled with violence, crime, bullying, chaos and unpredictability we have to ask some leading questions. Why is it that some children

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Do not become violent?

Do not become bullies?

Do not become depressed?

Do not loath themselves and others?

Do not despair and give up on life?

These may not be the most profound questions being posed in today's world but they are among the most important. Where can we turn to remarked the answers to these questions? What do we know that can help us unpack the issues embedded in them and come to a foresight of how to raise and educate young children?

The answers to these and other questions about children are emerging from new study about how the human brain grows and develops. Although we are a long way off knowing exactly who we can preclude violence and depression we have learned a good deal about how to bring up the brain's potential as an organ to help children grow to become contributing and productive members of society. Before we survey some of the implications from this study we need to briefly delineate the five areas of amelioration that all children pass through while childhood.

Understanding Child Development

There are five areas of amelioration that children experience as they grow to be young adults. These steps appear in a rather predictable sequence, one after the other. They are not like steps of a ladder leading to higher and higher levels. Rather, they are like a spiral of stages through which a child cycles endlessly as they grow and mature. At some point the top level of attainment may not be reached in a given area but that does not mean the child cannot develop to other areas of the spiral.

The five areas of child amelioration are:

oPhysical
oIntellectual
oLinguistic
oEmotional
oSocial
They can be certainly remembered by the use of the rather unfortunate acronym "Piles".

Physical Development

This area of child amelioration is no doubt the easiest to understand and observe. Corporal amelioration includes: gross motor skills, fine motor skills, motor control, motor coordination and kinaesthetic feedback. Let's by comparison each of these briefly.

oGross motor skills are those movements of the large muscles of the legs, trunk and arms.

oFine motor skills are the movements of the small muscles of the fingers and hands.

oMotor control is the potential to move these large and small muscles.
oMotor coordination is the potential to move these muscles in a flat and fluid pattern of motion.
oKinaesthetic feedback is the body's potential to receive input to the muscles from the external environment so the someone knows where his body is positioned in space.

Intellectual Development

This area relates to the level of intelligence of a child in general and to the various aspects of intelligence that sway broad level of general ability. Among these many aspects are:

oVerbal skills-our potential to delineate with words our ideas, attitudes, beliefs, thoughts and emotions.
oNon-verbal skills-our potential to use visual and spatial-perceptual skills to by comparison the world nearby us.
oAttention span-the potential to reserve a focus on a stimulus for a enough duration of time to by comparison it and understand it.
oConcentration-our potential to utilise attentiveness to juggle stimuli into various permutations as valuable to analyse it accurately.
oVisual-motor skills-the potential to coordinate the movements of the eyes and hands to manipulate objects effectively.
oVisual-perceptual skills-the potential to analyse stimuli visually without necessarily manipulating them manually.
oMemory-can be auditory or visual (or even kinaesthetic as in the case of remember dance steps) and can be divided into some leading sub-types:
- Immediate recall-ability to hold input long enough to recall it straight away if required to do so
- Short-term memory-ability to hold input over a longer duration of time, possibly minutes or hours
- Long-term memory-ability to store input and recall is well after it has been perceived, possibly days or months, even years later

Linguistic Development

Linguistic amelioration refers to language usage. Like other areas of child amelioration it can be divided into sub-types.

oReceptive language-our potential to understand spoken language when we hear it
oExpressive language-our potential to use spoken language to delineate to others
oPragmatic language-the potential to understand humour, irony, sarcasm and know how to rejoinder appropriate to what someone else has said or asked as well as know when to wait and listen
oSelf-talk-the potential to use internal, silent language to think through problems, cope with difficulties and postpone impulses
oReasoning-the potential to think through problems, usually with self-talk but at other times aloud, generate plans of action using words
oCreative thinking-although not strictly a linguistic function I contain it here because many people use language creatively, in new and inventive ways (e.g. Joyce, Beckett)

Emotional Development

This aspect of development, along with communal development, is probably one of the most underrated but yet most leading aspects of studying how to live in the world. No matter how exquisite intellectual, Corporal and linguistic amelioration may be we are doomed to live lives of disappointment and difficult if we have not gained satisfactory emotional development. It includes:

oFrustration tolerance-the potential to cope effectively when things do not go the way we want or expect
oImpulse control-the potential to think before we act and not do all things that comes into our head
oAnger management-ability to decide friction without recourse to verbal or Corporal violence
oInter-personal intelligence-understanding the attitudes, beliefs and motivations of others
oIntra-personal intelligence-understand our own attitudes, beliefs and motivations

Social Development

oSharing-knowing how to ask to use the materials that belong to another
oTurn-taking-knowing when it is your turn to do something and when to ask if you can do it
oCooperation-the skills of working with others towards a group goal of task
oCollaboration-the potential to transportation your input in a meaningful way when working with others.
Again it is valuable to repeat that emotional and communal amelioration play a hugely leading role in our potential to live lives of dignity and respect. They also largely decide how well we will get along with workmates, bosses and loved ones along with life-partners.

When we recognise that all children pass through each area of amelioration we construct educational programme for them that are developmentally appropriate. Most pre-schools have done just that. Unfortunately many early years settings succumb to pressure and push children towards schoraly goals and objectives, sometimes roughly obsessively. Indeed, the curriculum in our junior and senior baby classes is largely developmentally inappropriate. It is far too instructor and parent-centred and far too minute child-centred. Regardless, appropriate or inappropriate, it is not enough to focus on child amelioration alone in our work with young children. We must begin to recognise the inborn potential locked within the child's brain.

The Human Brain

Locked inside the brain are the potentialities that make us human. We are born with the potential for:

oLove Hate
oPatience Mistrust
oTenderness Violence
oHope Despair
oTrust Suspicion
oDignity Corruption
oRespect Revenge
It is the responsibilities of adults to unlock the clear potentialities of the brain and preclude the negative from appearing.

All educational experiences of children in the early years, certainly all educational experiences of children across the entire school years, must place an emphasis on releasing the clear potential that lies within the brain. new brain research, much of it conducted by Dr. Bruce Perry in Texas, has illuminated six core strengths, each of them associated to brain increase and amelioration that must be a focus in amelioration appropriate educational programmes for young children.

The Six Core Strengths

Bruce Perry and his colleagues at the Child Trauma Academy in Texas have identified six strengths that are associated to the predictable sequence of brain increase and development. These six strengths, if nurtured and fostered appropriately, will help a child grow to become a productive member of society. They are:

oAttachment
oSelf-regulation
oAffiliation
oAttunement
oTolerance
oRespect
Attachment

The first of the six core strengths occurs in infancy. It is the loving bond between the baby and the original caregiver. Early attachment theorists' conceiver of the original caregiver as the mum but it is now recognised that it could as well be the father, grandparent or any loving person. The original giver, when providing consistent and predictable nurturing to the baby creates what is known as a "secure" attachment. This is terminated in that rhythmic dance between baby and caregiver; the loving cuddles, hugs, smiles and noises that pass between caregiver and infant. Should this dance be out of step, unpredictable, very inconsistent or chaotic an "insecure" attachment is formed. When attachments are regain the baby learns that it is lovable and loved, that adults will supply bring up and care and that the world is a safe place. When attachment is insecure the baby learns the opposite.

As the child grows from a base of regain attachment he or she becomes ready to love and be a friend. A regain attachment creates the capacity to form and pronounce wholesome emotional bonds with another. Attachment is the template through which we view the world and people in it.

Self-Regulation

Self-regulation is the capacity to think before you act. minute children are not good at this, they learn this skill as they grow if they are guided by caring adults who show them how to stop and think. Self-regulation is the potential to take note of our original urges such as hunger, elimination, comfort and control them. In other words, it is the potential to postpone gratification and wait for it to arrive. Good self-regulation prevents anger outbursts and temper tantrums and helps us cope with disappointment and tolerate stress. It is a life skill that must be learned and, like all the core strengths, its roots are in the neuronal connections deep inside the brain.

Affiliation

Affiliation is the glue of wholesome human relationships. When children are educated in an environment and facilitates clear peer interactions through play and creative group studying projects they construct the strength of affiliation. It is the potential to "join in" and work with others to generate something stronger and more lasting than is usually created by one someone alone. Affiliation makes it potential to yield something stronger and more creative than is terminated by one alone. Affiliation brings into the child's awareness that he or she is not an "I" alone but a "We" together.

Attunement

Attunement is the strength of finding beyond ourselves. It is the potential to recognise the strengths, needs, values and interests of others. Attunement begins rather plainly in childhood. A child first recognises that I am a girl, he is a boy. through the early years of instruction it becomes more nuanced: he is from India and likes different food than I, she is from Kenya and speak with a different accent than I. Attunement helps children see similiarities rather than differences because as the child progresses from finding different colour skin and different ways of speaking he or she begins to recognise that people are more similar than different. That brings us to the next core strength.

Tolerance

When the child develops the core strength of attunement it learns that unlikeness isn't certainly all that important. The child learns that unlikeness is certainly tolerated. through this studying the child develops the awareness that is unlikeness that unites all human beings. Tolerance depends on attunement and requires patience and an occasion to live and learn with people who at first remarked seem "different". We must overcome the fear of unlikeness to become tolerant.

Respect

The last core strength is respect. Respect is a life-long developmental process. Respect extends from respect of self to respect of others. It is the last core strength to develop, requires a allowable environment and an occasion to meet a range of people. Genuine respect celebrates diversity and seeks it out. Children who respect other children, who have advanced this core strength, do not shy away from people who seem different. An environment in which many children are grouped together to learn, survey and play will bring up the core strength of respect.

How the Brain Grows

The brain grows from the bottom to the top. Each of the core strengths is associated to a stage and site of brain growth. In infancy attachment bonds are acquired and lay down emotional signals deep within the brain. At the same time the brain stem is finding to it that Corporal functions can be self-regulated. Later on in childhood the emotional centres of the brain come under addition control so temper tantrums disappear and the child controls their emotional life. In mid-childhood the child's brain begins to construct the capacity to think and reflect on the external environment. It is at this stage when the frontal areas of the brain begin to mature and it is at this stage in brain increase when the core strengths of affiliation, attunement, tolerance and respect can mature as well.

The Classroom and the Brain's Core Strengths

The instruction of young children must be undertaken with the core strengths in mind. Classrooms where there is peace and harmony among a wide range of children will generate opportunities for affiliation, tolerance and respect to develop. These classroom must be characterised by play, creative exploration of objects, lessons which are activity-based not teacher-lectured. There must be challenge to the brain in the form of innovative lessons and teaching methodologies. Cooperative studying activities must be part of the school day. The classroom should occasionally consist of an occasion to engage in cooperative, mixed-ability groupwork. There must be an occasion for long-term, thematic projects to be explored. The instructor should be a guide, all the time teaching with the core strengths in mind, all the time observing children and noticing which of them need more structure and advice as they grow through the core strengths. The instructor must also be a someone the children comprehend as predictable and caring, patient and kind; a someone who will not obsessively focus on mistakes.

Whose accountability is It?

We have learned that the child's brain grows in a predictable sequence and associated with this increase are six core strengths for wholesome living in the world. Every child is born with a brain possessing the potential to full construct these core strengths. However every brain must have an occasion to interact with a classroom and home environment that facilitates the amelioration of these strengths. It is the accountability of adults, particularly parents and teachers to get it right.

The point of Early Childhood study